This year (2025) finds me with 53 years of teaching “under my belt.” I have taught all levels from pre-K “(library lady” or “book lady”–volunteer) to juniors, seniors, and graduate students enrolled in my Advanced Writing class at the university where I have just completed 34 years. My first paying teaching job was junior high, and I spent 13 years with ages 12-13, the “difficult years.” I had some of the “funnest” experiences with this age group. When I was no longer the “young, fun teacher,” I taught in an elementary school setting before sixth graders went on to junior high, teaching language arts blocs, an assignment that was a “dream-fit” for me. After completing graduate school in my 40s, I went on to community college, then university teaching. This past fall I accepted a part-time teaching job at Apogee Gulf Coast Schools in its first year at the Alvin campus. After my Better Half died n 2022, I achieved a lifelong dream: opening a bookstore of my own, Rae’s Reads. A year later, I sold the house we had lived in for 47 years and moved into the bookstore. My goal is to circulate and repurpose books.
Just as teaching is “in my blood,” so is a passion for reading, writing, libraries, and everything bookish.
This blog will be open to anyone who loves books, promotes literacy and wants to “come out and play.”
SUNDAY STATS: RAE’S BLOGMAS READATHON, 2021 I did not stress, or fret, or worry and rush. I simply read as much as I could for a solid week.
Devotionals followed daily for a week. 4
Books finished. 4
Books still reading on. 3
Goals completed
Begin a new book: I decided to begin a book I had checked out from the library, one I heard a great deal about, not all of it positive, Cloud Cuckoo Land. I am now on page 549 (large print) and this may be my best read of 2021.
A simply amazing book by an amazing author
To read a book from my TBR shelf: I finished Present Over Perfect, which has been sitting on my shelf waiting to be read, months after it was donated to my LFL (Little Free Library).
Living and celebrating one’s imperfections
To read a genre new to me: About the only genre I haven’t at least sampled is a paranormal romance. I read a Cybil’s contender, Me Moth, as part of my assignment as a first round panelist for those awards. Moth is a novel in verse, not your typical Romeo and Juliet type story, which I enjoyed immensely.
Being a Cybils panelist has been such a growth experience.
I completed my goals successfully, made a dent in my TBR, and happily concluded my BLOGMAS READATHON.
Giving gifts at Christmas traditionally goes back to the Three Magi. Selecting the perfect present for important people in your lives is a pleasurable duty this time of year. To me, the best gifts I’ve ever been given are the gifts of time. Taking time out a busy schedule in the middle of a holiday rush-rush to visit an “old favorite professor” or to meet her at a restaurant for lunch (and pick up the tab…LOL) are gifts that mean so much.
From the first Christmas gift I gave my mother, a fifteen cent bottle of red nail polish I picked out and paid for with my allowance money to a “Snarky Cats” quilt which was a labor of love received last year, giving and getting is a part of Christmas. It definitely is more blessed to give than to receive, and yes, when you bless others, you, yourself receive a blessing. But, that’s not the main reason we give; we give because we love. When we express our love for others through the giving of gifts, we express God’s love for them too.
And let’s not forget the most wonderful gift ever given–the reason for the season, God’s priceless gift to us, his children–His Son. Let’s keep Christ in the picture this Christmas.
First Line Friday asks that we copy the first line of a current read. Today’s is from a book I’ve heard a great deal about.I have loved everything Anthony Doerr has written in the past and am also enjoying this 2021 publication.
” THE ARGOS
Mission Year 65
Day 307 inside vault one”
“Konstance
A fourteen year old girl sits cross-legged on the floor of a circular vault. A mass of curls haloes her head; her socks are full of holes. This is Konstance.”
The opening depicts “…Konstance, traveling toward a new world, decades from now.”
According to the back cover, we will also meet, “Anna and Omeir, on opposite sides of the city walls during the 1453 siege of Constantinople,” and “teenage idealist Seymour and octogenarian Zeno in an attack on a public library in present-day Idaho.”
Leave it to Doerr to magically interconnect these people “through an ancient story which comes to provide solace to these unforgettable characters.”
I have just begun and plan to MAKE time to read on it during my BLOGMAS READATHON this week.
I have started listening to Christmas records as I do housework and cook. We bought the old record player at a pawn shop for my birthday, the year before this birthday.
I’m shifting gears…hopefully done with the hustle and bustle; no more standing in line at the post office. What hasn’t been done may not get done, and that’s all right. I am starting to plan Christmas Day dinner and small gifts for my Christmas Day guests. I’ve been getting outside almost every day, mulching the flower beds with pine needles and brown, crusty leaves.
I hear this now from clerks in the grocery store and from people taking Christmas books and stuffed animals from my Little Free Library.
I’m deliberately focusing on the true meaning of Christmas, reading four devotionals daily, one which celebrates Advent, a season or time period I’ve not celebrated before.
So far this has been the most meaningful Christmas ever, and posting for Bllogmas lets me keep track.
What is really celebrated at Christmas, Christ’s birth.
Remember to read the Christmas story (The second chapter of Luke is traditionally used on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. If you’ve never done so before start a new family tradition.
I began my week on Sunday, but didn’t do that much reading because I was busy baking.I finished a book I had already started Monday.
BOOKS FINISHED SO FAR;
2 (Wintering , which I checked out from our library on Deb Nance’s recommendation, was so good I began it Monday night and finished it before book club at 6:30). It was a good day, weather-wise for reading.
BOOKS WITHIN A FEW CHAPTERS OF FINISHING: 3
Sections/chapters read every day: 4 (See the mention of the four devotional books I begin my day with.)
The question my mind jumps to as fast as a chicken on a June bug.
First order of business is to finish those I have started, so as soon as I close my laptop, I will pick up Pony, by the author of Wonder, one of my all-time-favorite reads.
This is a wonderful Western and so much more.
Until later today when I post Blogmas 2021, Day 15,
I find this particular Holiday season more meaningful for many reasons. First, my health is good for the first time since July; we had the opportunity to help out a refugee family this year; we simplified the gift-giving and card sending this time around, and I am reading four devotionals during each day; yes, four, and it has given me a sense of contentment, no matter, what and peace.
First, I am going a second time through Simple Abundance, a book I refer to as my “secular devotional.” It often speaks directly to me just when I need to hear the words set out for that day.
I am passing this one to a friend and book buddy after Christmas this year.
Another is a beat-up small but powerful book reminding me of God’s promises and includes snippets from some of my favorite inspirational writers like Charles Standley and Max Lucado.
Short, sweet, and reassuring
In sync with the season, the week before Advent began, I started a book that was donated to my Little Free Library, A Child in Winter.
A Catholic publication, this book has guided my Baptist mind through the meaning of Advent and the celebration of it for the first time.
Finally, a friend gave me a book for my birthday in November with the admonition, “I haven’t read it yet, so I want it back when you’re finished.” Courtney, I finished it Monday and will bring it over soon.
This has been a lovely, meditative look at a tranquil life and how to achieve it. It has made a difference in my “season” that hopefully will carry on into the year.
DeMoss opens this 2000 publication with a discussion of what makes up the “Devotional Life.” Each chapter ends with thought questions under the title, “Making it Personal”. Also, at the end of each chapter is a selection from an inspirational writer titled “From the Heart of.” Some of my favorites appear: Elizabeth Elliott, Vonette Bright, Kay Arthur, etc.
This manual on how to create one’s own “devotional life” includes many questions or issues I have/had in trying to do just that. My favorite chapters were “The Purpose of a Devotional Life” and “The Problems of a Devotional Life.” Each had helpful thoughts, questions to think about, and practical “solutions” to try. An appendix at the end of the book offers a list of recommended Devotional Books, which may be very helpful.
Hmmmmmm, maybe my friend may not get her book back until I have copied copious pages. LOL
Thanks to ny young blogging friend, Shaunessa for the meme above.
For Christmas in 2018, my dear friend, Susan, gave me a journal titled “One Question a Day: A Five Year Journal. It has turned out to be my second favorite Christmas present ever (The first is a “Snarky Cat” quilt she gave me last Christmas.) The journal is promoted as “a personal time capsule of questions and answers.” Each day, a question is posed, and one writes a response to it and dates it. I am in the fourth (next to the last) year of writing in it.
The beauty of it is, one can look back over the years and see how her/his answers have changed from year to year. For example, today, December 14th, the question is, “What is your favorite building?” In 2018, I answered, “the Ida something old Public Library in Houston, where I used to go when we were first married in 1964. In 2019, it was, “The Alvin Public Library; and in 2020, the journal reads, “The Strand Bookstore” in New York City. This was a place I had planned to visit and see for the first time in a March, 2020, girlfriend’s trip to NYC that ended up cancelled by Covid. This year, I wrote, “The New York City Public Library” because I took a virtual tour of it in March 2021 as part of my “pretend” trip to NYC I took via my blog (Thanks to those of you who went along with me, powerful women readers!) Who know what wonderful building it will be in 2022, the final year of the journal? I hope to spend the day in Houston a few times in the coming year, so perhaps it will be the Houston Museum of Fine Arts or the Museum of Natural History, or perhaps, I’ll wax nostalgic and think back to the Astrodome, the eighth wonder of the world, the world’s first indoor stadium, or the old River Oaks movie theater in Houston, who knows?
Looking ahead to Christmas…
Christmas always makes me feel like this!
…in 2018 the question for December 25th was, “What is the best gift you’ve received? That year, I simply wrote , “Salvation,” and wrote the same thing the next year. Last year, 2020, I listed both Susan’s quilt and the built-in book shelves My Better Half and I gave each other. This year, there are already two contenders (yes! I opened them early…with permission). We shall see…
For sure, this five year journal which prompts one to answer one simple question a day is one of the best presents I’ve been given. Thank you, Susan.
powerfulwomenreaders 